Wow! What a great camera!

I had a film SLR and loved to experiment with all the manual adjustments. My wife likes a simple point-and-shoot camera. This is a great compromise. There is a "Simple" setting for her to use, and I just move the selector two positions to "Normal" that allows all kinds of experimentation. I've been poring over the manual and playing with the settings the whole two weeks of our vacation we just finished. The 10x optical zoom got me a lot closer pictures than the people around me with their 3x zooms. I turned the camera off when not using it; it would be ready to shoot again when I turned it on in only a second or so. Very fast. The controls are small but handy, and not at all difficult to use. Wow-Great pictures. Battery power-We took over 200 pictures in one day, many with flash, and only used 2/3 of the battery power. We bought a fast 2 GB card, which is recommended if you are using the better video modes (both for speed and for recording time). The flash is only good for 10-13 feet in most cases. The manual lens cap is a bit to get used to. But the portability of such a powerful, quality camera is really wonderful. I saw guys around me with long lenses to get animal close-ups, and I was able to get just as close as they could with my small TZ1 that fits in a pouch on my belt! Wow. Lots of options--you can tweak this camera to be just the way you want it. The software that comes with it is not a top-of-the-line editor, but it provides lots of manipulation such as making a cut-out of something in your picture that you can apply to another layer. Uploading took about 4 seconds per top-quality picture, so our 500 pictures took over 1/2 hour to upload. A little slow, but not bad. The f-stop is only two steps, but the shutter speed is from 1/2000 second to 60 seconds. The settings for each picture are recorded with the picture so you can analyze and learn how the camera thinks. Video recording up to 30 fps is available with sound (built-in microphone and speaker for recording and for sharing). Love that bright LCD monitor which can be brightened 40% more to be more easily seen in bright sunlight. Little touches like a "high-angle" view allow you to see the monitor clearly when you are holding the camera over your head in a crowd to get a picture. Wow! It's not the total control of an SLR, but it sure is plenty of fun, and so handy to take anywhere!